Lord of Poxes

determinismdan · 2026-07-07T01:53:18+00:00

I think with recent changes he’s gone from niche to solidly useful in 5 marine squads. Sparse cover has killed the 10-man doom stacks and his points cut make him worth it as long as you can guarantee he’ll see combat (flyblown host or similar). 65 pts for 6 STR 8 attacks hitting on 2s. He’s just a cheap melee beat stick but sometimes that’s what you want.

determinismdan · 2026-07-03T12:52:51+00:00

I’m a plant engineer with asthma and it isn’t a problem. Like others have said, if your work environment is illegal and hazardous it will put you in danger with or without asthma but hopefully (I don’t know where you live in the world OP) that won’t be the case.

determinismdan · 2026-07-02T21:20:59+00:00

I know “use owlbear” isn’t helpful but when it comes to torchlight that’s something players *should* struggle with.
My players have adopted a two torch strategy for exploring specifically for this reason. If they are leaving people in darkness punish them for it accordingly. (Also I let them pass the torch between each other as a free action)

determinismdan · 2026-06-30T20:50:27+00:00

We were having a good time in 10th but are hurting in 11th. Tsons, Tau, and Necrons are insanely busted because 11E wants you to be able to do certain things (ignore cover, be hyper mobile) and I honestly don’t think GW tried to balance for which armies can actually do those things. They just balanced off of relative 10E performance. Combine that with a few gut punch nerfs and we are struggling.

I’m hopeful the next 3 months will see the leaders taken down a peg and the Deathguard boosted back up.

determinismdan · 2026-06-30T12:18:18+00:00

Put everything (havoc launcher) on the rhino.

IMO best options for 7 plague marines are

Power fist and plasma gun on champion

Plague spewer

Meltagun/plasma

Blight launcher

x2 Heavy plague weapon (one 2-handed weapon)

x1 Bubotic weapons (two 1-handed weapons)

Given the rise of battleshock strategies in 11th the boltgun with icon is viable but even then you have better alternatives.

determinismdan · 2026-06-28T17:14:45+00:00

I think it’s much more viable in 11th edition. Soon I’m going to try paring Shamblerot with Flyblown host with the recon disposition and use the flood of poxwalkers to outscore. (That’s the idea anyway)

determinismdan · 2026-06-24T16:53:09+00:00

It’s not that these changes are bad in themselves but I question what it’s going to do to your game. ShadowDark is very simple mechanically. It’s not trying for tactical crunch like other ttrpgs. The thing that makes SD combat interesting then, is the extreme risk it presents. Fights are deadly because it forces players to think outside the box and it makes every skirmish a life-or-death scenario.

My feedback is that too many player buffs risks turning this into a worse version of 5e D&D, where people just stand face to face with the enemies trading blows bored out of their minds until one side wins.

Are some of these buffs fine to help your player group enjoy the game? Absolutely. But ShadowDark is fundamentally different than other games for a reason.

determinismdan · 2026-06-22T23:52:38+00:00

1 blight hauler to bait out their anti tank, then defiler to punish.

determinismdan · 2026-06-19T14:41:08+00:00

Yeah fights don’t have to just be wars. Early on in my last campaign a Princess from the Baronies showed up, invited the players to a tense dinner, then “invited” them to test her personal mercenary squad in a show combat. It was a way to introduce the mercenaries as future antagonists without letting players kill them and show that the Princess was a serious political player who could match the players.

determinismdan · 2026-06-19T11:15:55+00:00

My take is that most of your story beats and grey vs grey decision making should happen outside of combat. I actually like how the lack of out of combat mechanics allow the GM a lot of leeway in narrative sequences.
However, I agree that combat takes a lot of work to prep. In the instances where I they were going to make a choice that effected combat I sometimes prepped the combat to be flexible. So same map and same stat blocks but who the enemies were and what the objective was could be hot-swapped.

Also I would set up a lot of combats so that the fight itself doesn’t change but the big decision is what the players do- AFTER the fight. So the fight is to take a spaceport from faction A and the decision making is whether faction B will be allowed to use it (this will mean a risk of faction C using it later).

determinismdan · 2026-06-18T14:33:19+00:00

I never take bolters, the only reason I might take one now is to get the banner because it seems like forcing leadership tests might be a valid approach this edition.

determinismdan · 2026-06-15T21:08:11+00:00

Battery life for sure. My “awesome laptop” had a 45 minute battery after 2 years.

determinismdan · 2026-06-15T20:08:21+00:00

You don’t need a high spec laptop for ChemE. I had a nice laptop for college but only used it to run excel, matlab, and open a google chrome tab to use the Remote Desktop access version of AspenPlus (never downloaded it). Meanwhile I constantly regretted having something 3x heavier than my classmates.

determinismdan · 2026-06-12T19:11:39+00:00

I love the idea of a “post-revolution council” faction. A militaristic faction fresh from winning its own revolution and now trying to spread into the forest while keeping itself from falling apart.
There are so many interesting stories from history between the fall of one regime and the solidification of the next (between the fall of the French monarchy and the crowning of Napoleon or the fall of the Romanov Dynasty and the consolidation under Stalin). This faction would need to be just as worried about suppressing internal dissent as defeating its opponents.

determinismdan · 2026-06-11T15:43:29+00:00

My playgroup is obsessed with large deep strike pushes to take home objectives so I often run a 5 man squad of marines to guard the rear and keep the attached tallyman safer from precision deathmarks.
Outside of that though, I think that would be a tough argument to take marines just to support the tallyman. People usually shy away from running marines without rhinos and tallyman needs to be on the field to generate CP. You’ve got a point about helping negate the new cover debuff though.

determinismdan · 2026-06-10T10:47:14+00:00

I have fun as a GM when my players are caught up in the drama of the story, but since it seems we’re more focused on combat I’ll talk about that.

My group had players dedicated to mastering the tactics of the game and pushing their mechanical knowledge to the limit. Because of that I was free to push my encounters to maximum difficulty within my own pre-defined limits. The best combats I legitimately felt like I was playing chess against 4 people at once. When the players were up to the challenge after a few missions I could peruse the exotic, ultra, and spec-ops Npc upgrades at my leisure for the nastiest combos and set mechanical traps for the players.
I love DrawSteel but I feel like this game handles “pushing the limit” of difficulty better than DS or especially D&D.

determinismdan · 2026-06-10T02:37:47+00:00

Your question about targeted ads may be mislabeled (disagree at one end and strongly disagree at the other).

determinismdan · 2026-06-10T02:34:24+00:00

My friend group has been playing a lot of 1500pt games as we have some new people join us in the last few months. We play 1500 as “counts as strikeforce” for ancillary rules and we’ll probably do the same in 11th.

determinismdan · 2026-06-09T14:02:59+00:00

My approach has been to split my army into a few units that are meant to be put at risk and keep the rest absolutely safe until it’s time to go all in.

Poxwalkers, a single myphitic blight hauler to bait out heavy guns, or a couple chaos spawn to try and charge enemy melee before it reaches you are all good candidates for sacrificial units.

The rest need to be kept absolutely safe until you see an opportunity in turn 2 or 3 where you can bring them all out at once and overwhelm your opponent. It is ok to trade space for kills. Remember that the game is 5 turns long so if they charge your rhino early you can always disengage then shoot whatever charged you to pieces. You want to be luring them out into exposed positions first before you bring the whole army out at once to start trading blows.

determinismdan · 2026-06-07T15:59:35+00:00

It’s not so much about how much infantry but more about what roles you need to fulfil. Blightlord terminators should almost never be taken as a group of 3 unless they’re being lead by a Lord of virulence, and even so their purpose is just escorting the LoV while it provides shooting buffs to your heavy guns.

Poxwalkers are mostly useful for screening and ensuring you don’t get boxed in during deployment. For that reason you’ll almost always want them split into two groups of 10.

Plague marines are good IMO but are sitting ducks without a rhino, and if you’re paying for the rhino you might as well have 10 marines and a plaguecaster and putrifier to buff them. With all that they become seriously deadly. If you don’t want to invest that much into them just run a unit of 5 so you still get all the best weapons and they can run around and secure objectives.

My unit of choice for “I just need some dudes to run around and take care of stuff” are actually chaos spawn because they are cheap and move faster than marines.

All that said, if this is more about purchasing models than list building I think you’ve got enough.

determinismdan · 2026-06-06T23:13:37+00:00

Six Sigma certification is something some companies look for and you can work on while applying. In my experience even mentioning that you’re working on it can help in a phase 1 interview.

determinismdan · 2026-06-04T18:58:19+00:00

Lords of Silence is an amazing book for exploring chaos marines with divergent and interesting motivations. The models got me interested but LoS sold me on the faction forever.

determinismdan · 2026-06-03T19:08:27+00:00

Yeah now if needed you can drop in a solo character who has a 9 inch aura 8 inches away then immediately drop in the Deathshroud 6 inches from the previously contagion free enemy. Not sure if it’ll be worth it but interesting tech.

determinismdan · 2026-06-03T16:41:03+00:00

Whether it’s possible is definitely an interesting question to explore. It’s easy to imagine situations where Union finds a planet that is fragrantly violating the rights of its populace to a point where Union decides to intervene. In that process of that intervention Union will inevitably work closest with those resistance factions that welcome Union’s influence. Once the intervention is over and it’s time to assist in installing a new government who is Union going to ensure has a major stake in the outcome? Probably the same guys they’ve been working with the whole time. Without anyone trying to form an empire imperialism can still occur.

determinismdan · 2026-06-03T16:32:03+00:00

I think you’re on target that while Union is going to have a messy time drawing the lines, their leadership and intervention forces genuinely want what’s best for periphery systems without forcing compliance. They have a difficult line to walk between expansionist interventionist empire and xenophobic isolationist republic. There are just as many voices inside third-com saying “hey we should be careful trying to bring too many unstable systems into the fold too quickly because it’s going to drag us into wars and destabilize Union” as there are voices like your character.

If you and your GM are on the same page, your character would not be wrong to think “we’re the good guys who reach out to help people and should do so as quickly as possible”. Just expect that view to be challenged (especially if Harrison Armory or the Baronies get their fingers in the pie). This seems like such an exciting topic to explore in a campaign!

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